The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth eBook

great palaces for very faint-hearted people, who thought
well of themselves, and in their prayers thanked Uncle
John, at whose great cost they lived in sumptuous
idleness. As this last specimen of human nature,
when dressed in full shine, would completely outshine
the most vain Pawnee chief that ever ran wild in Arkansas,
Mr. Smooth was anxious for a peep at the curiosity.
In truth, to Mr. Smooth’s unpolished eye London
looked as if it might have emanated from a place called
hook or crook, and stretched along the banks of a
nauseous stream spreading its death stenches in the
air, where, diffusing itself in the most perfect of
fogs, it lent cheerful aid to the trade of physicians.
Everybody affected great knowledge of system; and yet
things were so complex of past errors and ages that
no system existed equal to the requirements of the
present day. The municipality was great only on
dinners and donkeyism. It had indeed a dining
senate, but that august body never was known to discuss
the practical reform of anything but turtle-soup,
and that with an horrid carving of the English language.

“The beggar, (we name the worst nuisances first),
the begrimed sweep, the butcher, the hawker, the ignorant
costermonger, the ’cute cabby, the wily tradesman,
who seeks favors and pockets frowns from his distinguished
clowns—­the Lord, whose rank is known by
his tinsel, and the Duke, so deeply identified with
flunkeyism,—­all move along, helter-skelter,
helter-skelter. And then there came the small
men of smaller titles, and the commoner whose grumbling
was only equalled by his apeings. To dine with
my Lord Flippington was to him something great; nor
could his airs and ostentation be well improved.
The little man of little titles, too, stood profound
in his dignity: no man was larger, nor thought
he that his own little self wasn’t great.
To the tailor who made him he paid money down.
Of all men was he the largest dabbler in that divine
essence of things called men—­the philosophy
of blood. But to keep up the dignity it not only
required a great deal of experience, but a large amount
of tin in the pocket, which for the minus thereof
was it necessary to have a deal of brass in the face.
This principle, then, which is strictly in accordance
with natural philosophy, being very well developed
in this worthily aged country, makes the truly great
very great of modesty; while the man of pewter greatness—­that
is, great because Our Sovereign Lady said he might
take upon himself the name of Sir Simpleton Somebody!
always boiling over with the froth of his own follies.
With tin in his pocket, brass in his face, and never
a forlorn h in his vocabulary, is he the fellow
to do brown the ‘rag and tinsel.’